Tom Goss is an acclaimed indie artist whose work spans pop, rock, and electronic music and typically blends raw emotional storytelling with LGBTQ+ themes. With over a decade of touring and over 20 million streams to his name, Tom continues to be a fearless voice for authenticity, inclusion and joy in the queer community.
This summer, Tom dropped a bold, hilarious, and irresistibly catchy new single entitled “Gay Stuff.” Accompanied by an outrageously playful music video directed by longtime collaborator Michael Serrato, the song is an unapologetic celebration of queer joy, individuality, and the absurdity of labels.
“Gay Stuff” is a follow-up to another recent release, “Bear Soup”, which serves as a musical love letter to the bear community. This cheeky, bass-heavy anthem and accompanying video. packed with hilariously sexy visuals, not only is a perfect dance track but another example of how Tom uses music to uplift queer bodies and stories.
We had the chance to catch up with Tom to talk about his new music, pushing boundaries, the importance of being oneself and lots more in our exclusive interview.
I love the video for “Gay Stuff”. It’s such a fun summer song. I heard it had been in the vault for quite a while so what finally made this the right moment to release the song?
You know, honestly. It was like kind of Trump, you know? It’s like just the milieu in which we’re living in. I had just made this big, fun record and done some videos behind it last year, over the course of the last 18 months. I’m also finishing up this this record that’s really like Americana, which is like stories from the heartland, but from a really queer perspective. It’s very acoustic, it’s very queer, but it’s also a little slow sometimes and a little heady. I just felt like given what the world is going through and given what the country is going through, that it would be apropos to release some stuff that’s just really fun.
That’s really where my main focus was. I have been working on this song back and forth with my producer, Austin Danson, just kind of as a joke between us, to be honest with you, for like 10 years and finally I was like, you know what? We should just release this because it would be great and it would be a moment of levity in a time where we really need it.
I do think just being unapologetically queer in this moment in time is subversive and I feel like I’ve done a lot of stuff that’s really heady and really serious and really on the nose when it comes to political stances and I feel like it’s more effective often just to do something that’s really sneakily subversive and fun and I felt like that’s what we wanted to do in this moment.
There is something very subversive about how the lyrics of the song embrace and mock stereotypes at the same time. Was that a hard balance for you to strike?
No, not at all, because I live in this world, you know? I’m at Fire Island right now. I just stepped out of drag bingo to talk to you. I’m sitting on a pier. There’s the biggest Pride flag you’ve ever seen in your life flying over me, and I cannot be happier to be here, and I cannot be happier to see my queer community and all of the ridiculousness that we are …and that’s the thing…you walk down the street and you see these outfits that are so outrageous. No society would allow that to exist just on its streets – without judgment, without sneers, without cattiness – but we queer people just do it every single day and we look at each other and we say, yes, girl, do it. Right?
I can only speak for myself, but part of me is like, man, that’s crazy. I would never do that. But at the same time, I think, wow, that’s amazing. What courage does it take to be a queer person publicly in the world? And so, I really think that’s the balance of loving who I am, loving who my community is, and also just knowing that we are ridiculous and relishing in that.
You were quoted as saying that “everything is gay, everything is straight, everything is in between.” What do you hope people will take away from that sentiment?
I think that is what I hope people take away from it is, you know, I’m talking about the outfits in Fire Island. I hope people realize that they can wear those outfits in Nebraska. They can do whatever they want, anywhere they want, and they can also go join a football team, right?
It doesn’t have to be flamboyant. It doesn’t have to be feminine. It could be hyper masculine, it could be hyper straight. If you love fishing, go fishing. You know what I mean? Nobody’s saying that trout fishing is a gay activity. However, I know gay people that love trout fishing, so go do it. I just think that the idea that something is gay or something is straight is so ridiculous at this point in time. I just want people to do whatever brings them joy. That’s always my intention. Like what brings you joy? Is it hurting anybody? No. Perfect. Do it!
Humor is a huge part of this song – and so is freedom. Why do you think comedy is such an effective tool in queer activism?
I think there’s a really large degree of self-reflectiveness that has to exist if you are a queer person. We don’t get the luxury of seeing the social mores and these paths that the heterosexual community has laid out for us. They don’t fit us. We don’t embrace them without question and they often rub against us. And so, from an early age, we have to really start questioning why is the world this way? And how do I fit in that world? And I think ultimately humor comes from a place of initial disconnect, then introversion, then discovery and then embrace.
You can look at these things that are the disconnect and you can poke fun at them, even if they wholly are you because you’ve already gone through the process of saying like, yeah, I’m weird and I’m okay with that weirdness. You can poke fun of the weirdness because you are the weirdness and it’s also not coming from a place of insecurity. It’s coming from a place of complete security, so much so that you’re secure even though the world is judging you for that. I think that’s what makes great comedy and I think that’s why queer people are so funny and creative.
How do you balance the line between being funny and being meaningful when you’re writing a song like “Gay Stuff”? Do you start with the joke or do you start with the message?
It was always the joke. It was just gay stuff. I have to credit Austin because it’s changed so many times in the iteration in which it is now. I would say that he did a lot of the writing on it. It’s been very different over the course of 10 years. And when he sent it to me like eight months ago with some of these different things in it, I just was like, this is too good to not exist in the world.
I think that’s oftentimes how songwriting goes is you’re like, oh my God, this is hilarious. I love it. You know, there was an episode of This American Life that I listened to once that was in the writer’s room of The Onion and they were saying like, they sit around a table and they just pitch their ideas everybody’s there. There are 10 people in the room and 10 people have 10 headlines. And they pitched the headlines and they said, oftentimes the thing that has the funniest headline that has people cracking up, there’s nothing behind.
There are so many jokes. You know how you’re hanging out with a friend and you’re just like, oh my God, this is hilarious and that’s it, you know? But if that thing keeps coming back to you and if that thing keeps developing in your mind, then you know, there’s something else there. I think it always starts with the punchline, and then you try to figure out, oh, is there meat to this punchline? And, if so, then you continue with it.
The music video for “Gay Stuff” is so much fun and you, you’ve pulled it off in 48 hours. How are you able to get such a polished video out put together in just two days?
You know, it’s funny because Michael Serrato and I have worked together for so long, so we really do have a shorthand and we also really trust each other implicitly. Michael’s really brilliant at creating characters and he’s really brilliant at fashion. He has a really keen vision and we knew like, oh, we want to go on the desert. We had just shot “Bear Soup”, which was a huge undertaking and took so much planning and took so many people, and it was really specific what we wanted.
And so, when we were driving out afterwards, we just started talking. We knew this was going to happen. We knew we wanted some dancers. We had booked the dancers, and that’s all we had. So, we knew who they were and then we decided we wanted, like, you know, I think there was like three main outfits, but we went to the thrift shop and if you ever need to go thrift shopping, you should go with Michael Serrato because he is just the best at finding everything. And I was texting while I was driving, sorry, mom, and just like texting my friends. And the thing about Palm Springs is that – and I’m getting the sense that Fire Island is the same – is that the queer community is so tight and everybody who’s there is there for a reason that’s not like people in LA, because they want to be famous. People are in LA because they want something to be given to them. People in Palm Springs want to give something back and so it’s really easy to establish friendships and connections and find a party and find an adventure.
If you need a poodle, if you need a gym, if you need a coffee shop, it just started flowing in. People just started texting me, “I heard you’re looking for things. I can do this, I can do this, I can do this” – which is an anomaly in this world. People are not trying to give you something and trying to create art. People want to be a part of something as long as it is good for them and there was no point in this process where that happened. I also think there’s no place in the world that this could have come together like it did then in Palm Springs.
If someone’s feeling unsure or afraid to embrace like their weirdness or gay stuff, like what would you tell them?
Hmm. I guess I tell them that I value them and appreciate them and love them for who they are. That’s a really interesting question. It’s making me a little emotional. I’m trying to not cry, you know? I think that’s it. I don’t know that it’s something that anybody can do for anybody, right? But I also think that we can all be a support and to embrace other people’s authenticity regardless of how fully that matches our own.
Now, can I ask you about “Bear Soup”? What was the inspiration behind it?
I was walking around Barcelona – and again, the punchline came and I thought, oh my God, wouldn’t it be hilarious if there was a bear? Well, first I thought, why is there not a bear song that is a twerk anthem? There are all these bears. They’ve got all this meat to shake and nobody’s writing that. I Googled and looked for it. I was like, does this exist? And it didn’t exist. And I was like, oh, this has to exist and it has to be “bear soup”, which is a bear pool party.
Then I just started walking around Barcelona, which again is like a really queer city full of so many bears. And I just started writing different iterations of lyrics that made me laugh and that was really it. Honestly, the verses are kind of improvisational. I wrote the chorus and then I recorded the chorus and I was like, oh, this is great. But I knew that the verses had to have a really different energy and I wasn’t exactly sure what was going to happen. Sometimes I just play the track and go in the studio and just go off and that’s essentially what happened, I think especially on that second verse, that was my first improvisational take of the song. Sometimes you capture a moment so perfectly when you’re not overthinking it that you’re like, I’m not going to do another take. I’m not going to do anything else with this. This is too funny – because you’re being honest in the moment.
The video and the song really celebrate body positivity, which I think is great. What does body love mean to you today and has your relationship changed with that over time?
It’s really interesting. I guess the question really is twofold. In terms of how I embrace other people, I fully embrace other people and my answer to that last question was just be like fully supportive and loving in whatever way somebody presents themself. That’s always what I want to be and where I come from.
I’m full of people in my life. The bear community that I love, these are my husband, my friends, and they hold so much trauma as a result of how the world has treated them or seen them as a result of their body shape and I see them as so beautiful and magnificent and smart and talented and sensitive and caring and compassionate.
If I could do anything in the world, it would be to take all of that judgment away from them so that they could be in the world without kind of that deep pain. I think, ironically, if I talk about body positivity, I put it back on myself. I’m much more judgmental about my own body and how I present in the world and I think part of the reason that I can be really empathetic to the body positivity movement is because my family made fun of me a lot for being the chubby one. I grew up in a family of gymnasts and I went to college as a wrestler.
We’ve always been really athletic and my brothers are much leaner than I am and I’m kind of stocky. My mother’s a short, stocky Italian woman and she always told me, “Watch out, you have my body type. Look at my aunts, look at all my family, look at my cousins. Look at how they look.” She’s kind of got her own body dysmorphia and I think she passed that down to me. So, it’s interesting how I’m not particularly great at listening to my own message, but I’m really trying to work on it. I’ve also created this dynamic where I continue to make these music videos where I’m scantily clad. I understand that I’m in this business where the way that I look affects the number of people that watch my videos. And so, I’ve created this this paradigm for myself that’s really unhealthy. And as I’m entering into my mid-forties now, it gets harder and harder and harder, so it’s interesting.
Across the projects that you’ve worked on, you don’t really stick to one lane. How do you stay so genre-fluid and fearless in your creativity?
You know, I think part of it is I have no idea what I’m doing half the time. I’m not a trained artist. I never had role models in the same way. There weren’t queer singer/songwriters when I was growing up and I really just do what makes me happy.
I just want to speak about gratitude for a second because I’ve been doing this for 20 years. I’m on tour right now and every day I show up and there’s some amazing person that I’ve known for eight years, 10 years, 12 years, 20 years, who’s followed my journey and embraced me and loved me fully – no matter what project I put out. They really get me and they understand my intentionality behind things. They understand that I’m not like trying to be a poser about anything. I’m just trying to create and generate joy in the world.
And I think that my fan base – which, I hate that word – I would say that my friends who are on this journey with me embrace me no matter what’s going on in my life. I think you can’t expect somebody to be doing the same thing or even be the same person for 20 years. It’s just not possible and so I think that the people that listen to my music that are on this journey with me, and also my husband who provides me with a lot of love and support make it possible for me to, on whatever tangent feels fun to me or important to me at the time.
You mentioned the Americana album and in addition to that, what else is going on? What’s next for you?
Gosh, isn’t that enough? I released two music videos in the past month. I have another record coming up…the answer is I don’t know. I’ve been doing some writing and producing for other queer artists. If there are any other queer artists that are interested in working together, they should just write me.
I’m in a studio now in Los Angeles and I’ve always wanted to have a place where I can just be free to create, and so I’m just creating every single day. I think that I feel like now, as a queer elder, I can provide that opportunity for other people as well and I think that would be a really great transitionary period for me. I just directed music videos for Ryan Cassata and Mike Maimone in the past year and I would love to be a support for other queer artists trying to find their voice.
To learn more about Tom Goss, visit his website, http://tomgossmusic.com. You can also follow him on Facebook and Instagram.
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